Hope is an Admission of Failure (Goodbye Obama)

by Ryan Johann Perry

Hope, ladies and gentlemen, is and has always been an admission of defeat. It is faith without a foundation, a prayer post-facto stupid life decisions. The truth of the matter is if you voted for hope, you are still waiting for its manifestation to arrive. Over 8 years, you’ve slogged whatever you identify yourself on a brick road of fiat currency towards the secular cathedrals of the “As-Seen-On-TV” government god. These prayers, shouted from the rooftops of student union buildings, through social media and in the echo chamber of lemming protests, for a beautiful post racial world wherein all will be provided, from healthcare to education, treat divine intervention like a wet dream.

Hope has always been popcorn popular. From teary-eyed, body painted sports fans to stage four cancer victims. Hope can be seen everywhere from the bleachers at the Cleveland Browns FirstEnergy stadium to candlelight vigils. It is the hidden hand behind placards and protest signs. Hope is a prayer for mental quadriplegics who believe providence is winning a scratch-off or getting right swiped on Tinder.

Hope and change, however, are mutually exclusive propositions. No revolution was founded on hope. Change happens whether you buy the ticket or not; it is happening whether you even know it is occurring.

The paradigm shift before us now is the sad-swagger shuffle off the White House lawn of America’s hope-sick emperor. A president whose mandates, decrees and even now, last minute rule writings bestowed on Americans have had the net benefit of fuck-all. Obama is an actor so obsessed with his legacy and the rusting obsolescence of his utopian ideals that a few months ago, his used his office to implore the American people to elect his lotioned, right-hand surrogate Hillary Clinton – the single most corrupt, duplicitous politician to have ever masturbated to the idea of executive orders.

Within months of his histrionic 2008 election, it became evident that Barack Obama is a charlatan, a snake-oil salesman of the worlds oldest elixir, hope. It was under the auspices of hope and the collective breath of millions of frustrated and hopeless Americans that gave his Wright Brothers candidacy lift. Hope was the sugar cube in the Iphone-like marketing of Big Government policies, rebranded as a choice of the new millennial generation, coated with ideas of revolution and brighter futures.

America’s syndication of hope has made spin-off arguments that belly-flop into the absurd. In the waning weeks of Obama’s presidency, the argument for Obama as one of our greatest presidents due to his lack of scandals has been making the rounds. Scandals are the wheelhouse of the fellating media and the case can be made that no president outside of JFK’s corpse has been fawned over as much as Barry O.

There is an interesting parallel in how both regular people and the media have become increasingly powerless and prone to sensationalism and drama. The media, having terraformed into our consciousness since the oughts, have aided our loss of individuality, autonomy and freedom. It is most clearly seen in how we, like the media, have lost our ability to question. American liberty has been on trial but no evidence has been brought into record, the cross examinations nothing more than spy vs spy twitter feuds revolving around identity, speculation and emotion.

It is the chemical reaction between synapses fired off with thoughts of identity, emotion, and hope that catalyzes the tears for the hip Superman with the sick jump shot, whose contrived, affected, ‘candid’ photos strewn across Time magazine are second only to the multitudes of selfies by self-obsessed teenagers. The tragedy is the slow descent of Obama back to the lying, two-bit, narcissistic, self-aggrandizing opportunistic modern age with the rest of us. The great comedown has commenced.

Obama once said if he had a son, he imagined he would look like Trayvon Martin. I contend that if Barry O was college age in Chicago under an Obama presidency, he would have been Trayvon, selling that sticky-icky and trying to get his lean on.

The Obama years have been the clearest example of what I will call the Obama Paradox, which is inherent in all authority. A good friend of mine said he would vote Obama forever if he could, but he can’t, because he is a felon. A felon for the same careless acts of youth Obama confessed to in one of his shitty books. The problem with many leaders, and in this case Obama, is that he would never have made it to where he is had he grown up under the reign of his own policies. Obama would have never gone to college, if he were busted for coke and marijuana. Obama would have never been president.

The Smiths, the greatest band for virgins, once asked “How soon is now” and this humble writer asks the same of President Barack Obama. The Cosby president with the parlor trick tongue, who duped a generation now waking up to realize they have been fucked.

And in the days following his farewell address, we have to ask how we got here? Before us on the television is a stuttering, babbling fool, somehow mistaken for an orator, who has used the government and leftist rhetoric as a lubricant for his legacy.

Obama ran as an anti-war candidate and yet was at war every single minute of his presidency. Obama ran under the idea of transparency and yet punished more whistleblowers than any president ever. This is a president who funneled U.S. made weapons to Cartel members under the “Fast and Furious” program, who bemoans the terror of ISIS yet supported them when they were called “moderate muslim rebels.” Yet none of these were scandals. When Edward Snowden revealed the complete decimation of civil liberties through the NSA’s “Prism” program, Obama acted like he didn’t know. When Black Lives Matter started spouting racist, ill-informed propaganda, Obama invited them to the White House. While fake news has become a buzzword, we have to remember the repeal of the Smith-Mundt act of 1948 under his reign, essentially allowing the United States government to propagandize its own people. We have to remember the indiscriminate drone bombings that have killed thousands of innocents in the oil rich Middle East. Not one of these made trending headlines.

And yet everywhere the swine are crying, having unknowingly looked the other way the entirety of the Obama years. In this case, the ‘other way’ is the collection of pixels and data immediately before them. The future has become a reflection, a feedback loop. The saddest truth of all is that people are not crying because Obama is leaving, they are crying because their hopes never came to be.

Here’s to the death of party politics, the exile of the fake emperor, and the wild, unruly momentum of change. Good riddance, President Obama.